TIME EXTEND
Devil May Cry
The Resident Evil 4 that never was, and the Soulslike precursor we never saw coming
By Callum Bains
Developer/publisher
Capcom (Production Studio 4)
Format
PS2
Release
2001
Had you been of school age in the early 2000s, you might have picked up hushed rumours of a peculiar new videogame from Japan. Available to only those children whose parents didn’t pay much attention to age ratings – or satanic imagery and voluptuous silhouetted women – this was a game so joyfully violent, so relentlessly fiendish, so twisted in its grotesqueries, the older kids claimed, that even Satan himself would break down in frightened sobs should he ever put its disc in his PS2. It was so scary, in other words, that from sight alone, even the devil may cry.
If such overly literal interpretations of Capcom’s demon-hunting slasher could only ever belong to impressionable primary-school children, they did inadvertently reflect Devil May Cry’s struggle with self-identity. Even its creators didn’t seem to know what game they were making. Originally conceived as Resident Evil 4, its gothic setting, faintly inspired by Christian demonology, and mixed melee/ranged combat system that put style over survival was eventually deemed too far removed from Capcom’s staple horror series. At the advice of studio general manager and future Resident Evil 4 director Shinji Mikami, the game was spun off into its own property.
Those origins aren’t difficult to spot. Much of the game sticks neatly to Resident Evil’s basic structural form, as protagonist Dante is thrown into a labyrinthine gothic castle, stitched together by interconnected rooms that must be gradually opened by locating keys to unlock the way ahead. You’ll often loop back on yourself, or return to previously discovered locations through entrances that had appeared impassable. Consumables are hidden throughout, and weapons placed in locations easily missed by the unobservant (we admit to having to backtrack for the shotgun, forgetting that it is, of course, buried under a desk in the library). The door animations that trigger each time you leave a room are identical to those in the release version of Resident Evil 4, the fixed camera angles are a hangover of that series’ earlier titles, and it’s impossible to not notice the physical similarities between the softly spoken, curtain-haired Dante and pretty boy Leon S Kennedy.